It was a headline that certainly catches your attention: “UW-Madison Cross Country and Track athlete dies at 21”. You immediately think that it was some sport-related thing: a heart attack caused by an undetected congenital condition, or hit by a car while on a training run near the campus. But the death of Sarah Shulze on April 14th was instead due to suicide. Another young person who decided that living was no longer worth it.
I’m a big Badgers sports fan, but I was not familiar with Sarah Shulze. She ran for both the Cross Country and Track and Field programs, was an excellent student–being named Academic All Big Ten the last two years, served on the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, and was active in politics–working as an intern at the Wisconsin Legislature.
The question that needs to be asked is why someone so young, so driven, and so dedicated would decide to end it? How does someone like that lose hope to the point that she sees no reason to go on?
Hopelessness seems to be a common theme in the messaging that not just young people but nearly everyone today is getting in all forms of media. We are living in “the worst of times”–and things are only going to get worse. Soon that begins to pervade every through you have–and you begin to live your life with the belief that nothing matters and you certainly don’t matter. But that messaging can change. We can refute the negative predictions, the self-defeating thoughts, and the insinuations that everyone is part of a huge problem with no solutions.
You want some things to be hopeful about?
Your presence is not a “burden on an overwhelmed planet”. Your parents did not make a “morally unethical decision” to bring you into this world. And you are not being “selfish” in wanting to have children of your own.
Earth is not going to turn into Venus someday. We are too far away from the Sun to reach the same temperatures, and our atmospheric makeup is entirely different in nature. No polar bears have died because you got a drivers license. You did not kill all the bees because your parents made you mow the lawn. And your neighbors are not killing bees by cutting their lawns now. Technology already exists to produce all of the potable water the world could need and to transport it to those end users.
If you choose a career in a field that is valued by society, you will make more than enough money in your lifetime to pay off your student loans, buy a house, and retire comfortably. Somewhere, someone is developing the new hot technology, product or service that billions of people will want and pay for–and that person will want to hire you to build it, supply it, or sell it. Free markets are cyclical and always regress to the mean. Baby Boomers will eventually move out of their houses and free up market supply–bringing down prices.
Like every other pandemic in human history, COVID-19 will burn out and produce only small, occasional outbreaks that will not demand societal shutdowns. Not everyone will be obsessed with getting drunk and high forever.
The Twitter or Facebook post featuring Hip Hop lyrics or a movie quote you put up at the age of 14 when you had 14 followers didn’t hurt anyone at the time–and it is not hurting anyone right now. Bikini pics with few likes or shares are not rejections of your entire being by the whole of civilization. Enjoying a now “problematic” movie or book from your younger days does not define all of your beliefs today–and is likely just as funny or irreverent as it was back then. Political “purity” is impossible to sustain. If someone is on a college campus saying “bad things” about someone who is not in the room–that person’s feelings are really being hurt. Your teachers are not “grooming you” to be victims of sexual assault.
Elections are not being stolen. People have ample opportunities to comply with all election requirements, Those who are elected have surprisingly little power over the everyday details of your lives. States are not going to fight against other states or break away to form their own countries. Our very natures as humans will forever drive us to fight for individual rights and personal freedoms.
I’m sure Sarah Shulze heard the exact opposites of all these statements thousands of times in her short life–to the point that she believed them and internalized that hopelessness. I’m hopeful that it’s not too late for us to help those she leaves behind.
